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Hands Around the World |
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Hands Around the World |
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Indian Cultures from Around the World
Area: Brazil (Amazonas and Roraima states) and Venezuela (Map)
First Contact: 1929
Population: 11,700 in Brazil (in 2000) and 15,193 in Venezuela (in 1992)
Language Root: Yanomami (4 sub-groups) Yanoma (Yanomam), Sanuma, Ninam, Yanam.
Other Names: Yanomame, Yanomami, Guaica, Guaharibo, Guajaribo, Ianomâmi, Yanomama, Yanoama, Xirianá
Dialects: Eastern Yanomami (Parima), Western Yanomami (Padamo-Orinoco), Cobari (Kobali, Cobariwa). Different from, but related to Yanomami (Waika) of Brazil. The Cobari dialect is easily intelligible with the others. Tropical forest. Hunters, agriculturalists: bananas, tubers, tobacco.
Today: Continuous active genocide including the senseless massacre in September, 1993, An estimated 23 persons died, mostly women and children. Sixty two percent of Yanomami tested positive for new strains of malaria introduced by garimpeiros (gold miners) which have brought every conceivable disease known to modern man, from the common cold (Yanomami have no immunity to combat our most common ailment) right up to and including AIDS.
The Yanomamo (Yah-no-mah-muh) also called Yanomami, and Yanomama, are deep jungle Indians living in the Amazon basin in both Venezuela and Brazil. The Yanomami are believed to be the most primitive, culturally intact people in existence in the world. They are literally a stone age tribe. Cataloged by anthropologists as Neo-Indians with cultural characteristics that date back more than 8000 years, these are a Last Encyclopedia. They have never discovered the wheel and the only metal they use is what has been traded to them from the outside. Their numbering system is one, two, and more than two. They cremate their dead, then crush and drink their bones in a final ceremony intended to keep their loved ones with them forever. They are hunters and gatherers who also tend small garden plots. They are one of the most successful groups in the Amazon rain forest to gain a superior balance and harmony with their environment. David Yanomami (one of the Amazon's most respected "Page" or Medicine men) foretells that if the white man does not stop his perverse destruction of our Mother Earth, that the white men are doomed to extinction, right along with the rain forest and the Yanomami.
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| Yanomamo Village | Using Hallucinogenic Yopo |
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| Yanomamo Yapo Ceremony | Yanomamo Yapo Ceremony |
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| Yanomamo Yapo Ceremony | Yanomamo Using Hallucinogenic Yopo |
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The Yanomami comprise a society of hunter-agriculturists of the tropical rainforest of Northern Amazonia, whose contact with non-indigenous society over the most part of their territory has been relatively recent. Their territory covers an area of approximately 192,000 km2, located on both sides of the border between Brazil and Venezuela, in the Orinoco-Amazon interfluvial region (affluents of the right shore of the Rio Branco and left shore of the Rio Negro). They make up a culturo-linguistic group composed of at least four adjacent subgroups who speak languages of the same family (Yanomae, Yanõmami, Sanima and Ninam). The total population of the Yanomami in Brazil and Venezuela is today estimated to be around 26,000 people.
The Yanomami local groups are generally made up of a multifamily house in the shape of a cone or truncated cone called yano or xapono (eastern and western Yanomami), or by villages composed of rectangular-type houses (north and northeastern Yanomami). Each collective house or village considers itself an autonomous economic and political entity (kami theri yamaki, ‘we co-residents’) and its members ideally prefer to marry inside this community of kin with a ‘cross’ cousin, that is the son or daughter of a maternal uncle or paternal aunt. This type of marriage is reproduced as far as possible between the families in a generation and from generation to generation, making the collective Yanomami house or village a dense and comfortable mesh of consanguine and affinal bonds. However, despite this ideal autarchy, all local groups maintain a network of relations of matrimonial, ceremonial and economic exchange with various nearby groups, considered allies in opposition to other multicommunity groupings of the same nature. These groupings partially overlap to form a complex sociopolitical nexus, which links the totality of Yanomami collective houses and villages from one end of the indigenous territory to the other.
The space of the forest used by each Yanomami house-village can be described schematically as a series of concentric circles. These circles delimit areas with distinct modes and intensity of usage. The first circle, within a five kilometer radius, circumscribes the area of immediate use by the community; small-scale female gathering, individual fishing or, in the summer, collective fishing with timbó poison, occasional brief hunting trips (at dawn or dusk) and agricultural activities. The second circle, within a five to ten kilometer radius, is the area of individual hunting (rama huu) and day-to-day family food gathering. The third circle, within a ten to twenty kilometer radius, is the area used for the collective hunt expeditions (henimou) lasting one to two weeks that precede the funerary rituals (cremation of bones, burial or ingestion of ashes during the intercommunity reahu ceremonies), as well as the long multifamily hunting and gathering expeditions (three to six weeks) during the period when the new swiddens are ripening (waima huu). Also found in this 'third circle' are new and old swiddens: here, people make occasional encampments nearby in order to cultivate the former and harvest the latter, as well as hunt the abundant game in the vicinity
Text from © Instituto Socioambiental. You can find their web site here: http://www.socioambiental.org/e/
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Yanomamo Dance of the Women Yanomamo Girl Yanomamo Dance of the Women Yanomamo Making Fire Yanomamo Lady with Bird Yanomamo Lady with Bird Yanomamo Shaman Yanomamo Women Yanomamo Women Yanomamo Women Yanomamo Women Yanomamo Women Fishing Yanomamo Women and Child Yanomami at the River The women weave and decorate the baskets. They make both flat baskets and burden baskets which are carried by a strap around the forehead. These they dye with a red berry called onoto which they also use to decorate their bodies and dye their loin cloths. The baskets are then decorated with traditional geometric designs with masticated charcoal pigment. Fire sticks are still often used to make a fire. The men carry quivers containing extra carved wooden spear and arrow points when they are out hunting. Around the outside of the quiver they also tie the fire making sticks. Making fire with sticks is a long and arduous process requiring skill and dexterity.
The Yanomami as well as other Indian tribes in the Amazon Basin hunt with bows and arrows or blow guns. The blowguns of the Amazon tribes are all made in a similar way. A piece of cane is used to fashion the shaft as it must be long and straight. Often a thinner pieces of cane is fitted inside a larger piece. A mouthpiece is cut or carved from wood. The darts are made from sharpened fibers and balanced on the end with either cotton, which they grow in the villages, or the fiber of the kapok tree. They often use poison from the poison dart frog to dip the ends of the darts in. They stroke the sides of the frog causing it to excrete the poison, then boil it down to intensify it. Blowguns are amazingly accurate. Although the darts seem fragile, they can easily piece a tree, and when used with the poison can bring down the largest game. The darts are carried in a quiver. These are often made from a section of bamboo. The top of the quiver can be made from animal hide or may be woven into a basket shape. The quiver can be entirely woven like a basket or even made from leaves. Some tribes such as the Guahibo decorate the shafts of the blowguns with woven fibers. The bows and arrows of the Amazon tribes are all made in a similar way. A flexible piece of wood fashions the bow and is strung with a hand spun fiber found in the rain forest. The arrows are made with a piece of cane for the shaft and is fletched with feathers. Yanomamo arrowheads are carved with wood sharpened twigs or the bones of animals, birds, or fish, while other tribes, such as the Guahibo, often use scrap metal to fashion their points. Young boys begin at an early age to practice archery skills, often with a lizard tied to a string.
Spear points
Set of Yanomamo bow and arrows in a cane quiver. The quivers are decorated with charcoal and/or the crushed red onoto nut. Each quiver contains a bow and three arrows. The bow and arrows measure approx. 27" to 28" long. The arrows are fletched with feathers and each have a different type of arrowhead carved from hard wood designed to hunt different sizes of game - birds, small mammals and larger mammals.
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Detail showing the three arrows and bow in the above quivers.
The Yanomamo quivers below are called "thora". These are carried with a strap around the neck hanging down between the shoulder blades on the back. Within the thora are extra hand carved hard wood arrow heads or spear points. The lid of the thora is made of boar hide with the fur on the inside of the lid.
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| Yanomamo Chief Selling Baskets | Women Making Baskets |
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| Yanomamo Women With Baskets | Yanomamo Women With Fishing Basket |
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| Yanomamo Girl With Basket | Yanomamo Women |
Shotos and Burden baskets are woven by the women. On the burden basket a strap is attached that fits around the forehead while the basket rests on the back like a backpack. The baskets are used for everything from carrying fish to firewood. Yanomamo Shoto's are flat baskets or trays, usually use in the shabano or hut to store things as well as for serving trays. They are stored by hanging from the shabano poles. Yanomamo baskets are colored a reddish color from crushed onoto seeds and usually are decorated with traditional designs and symbols in black. The black is usually masticated charcoal.
The baskets below are traditional handmade Yanomamo Burden Baskets
from the Venezuelan Amazon rainforest.
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| 11" x 12" | 11" x 11" | 10" x 10" |
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Yanomamo Shotos
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| 12" in diameter | 15" in diameter | 12" in diameter |
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| 15" in diameter | 16" in diameter | 11 1/2" in diameter |
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The Yanomami smoke an hallucinogenic drug called yopo. Yopo is made by grinding several natural roots and vines that are gathered in the rainforest. Smoking the drug is very painful, causing blinding pains in the head and nausea. After they have achieved a trance state, they communicate with the spirit world and relate what they are seeing with chanting and dancing. The yopo is taken by being forcibly blown into the nasal cavities by another person by means of a long pipe like object.
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yopo pipe 24" long. |
yopo pipe 25 1/2" long |
yopo pipe 32" long. |
Yanomamo female loin cloth
Necklaces
Additional Information
General Information
The Yanomamo people - Excerpts from: Napoleon A. Chagnon. Yanomamo: The Fierce People, CBS College Publishing, New York, NY, 1983.
Yanomami articles from NATIVE-L mailing list archives
Instituto Socioambiental - Indigenous Peoples
At the Yanomami's - Beata Pawlikowska - The authors travels the Orinoco river to meet the Yanomami
Yanomami - SIL International
NOVA Online/Warriors of the Amazon
At the Yanomami's by Beata Pawlikowska
Yanomamis, die Indianer im Amazonasgebiet
Tiki visits the Yanomami in Brazil
CD Rom
Yanomamo Interactive - University of Manitoba, includes material from the CD Rom created by Peter Biella and Napolean Chagnon
Yanomamo Interactive: Dr. Napoleon Chagnon's famous film, The Ax Fight, is currently being developed into an interactive CD-ROM that will allow students to more effectively understand the social and political dynamics that the film portrays. An online demo is currently available that illustrates a few minutes of this film, as well as the accompanying background information that accompanies the CD.
The Axe Fight - Movie
The Axe Fight - CD index
Photos/Videos
Photograph Gallery - from Yanomamo Interactive
Anthropologists and Napolean Chagnon
Napoleon Chagnon's Waterloo: Anthropology on Trial
Telegraph Magazine on Chagnon and Tierney
Uncut version of Chagnon story
The Yanomami Crisis in Anthropology
Culture
simple - complex - Kinship diagrams
Intergroup Relations and Social Distance among the Yanomamo
Yanomamo - Varying Adaptations of Foraging Horticulturalists by Raymond Hames in Just in Time Anthropology series
Yanoama - Yanomamo culture summary from the Ethnographic Atlas.
The Summit Times - Terminology Among the Yanomama Indians
The Use of the Genus Virola as a Hallucinogen
The Yanomamo, Neoteny, Heterochrony, and Human Evolution
Flood Myths Part Two (Morgana's Observatory)
Yanomami - in search of survival
Tribal Problems and Support
The CCPY is a Brazilian, independent, and non-profitmaking organisation.
The Yanomami in peril - from Multinational Monitor
Amanaka'a Amazon Network - Yanomami Update
Yanomami in Peril - An interview with Davi Kopenawa Yanomami.
Chronology of the Yanomami Genocide
Science News: Tuberculosis outbreak. (Yanomami Indians of Brazil)
Literature
Anthro.Net - Yanomamo readings
Pre-1983 research on theYanomamo Indians - bibliography
The Yanomami Resource Page from PBS
Environmental and Human Rights Crisis in Amazon
Susanna Hecht, and Alexander Cockburn, 1989. The Fate of the Forest: Developers, Destroyers and Defenders of the Amazon. NY: Verso.
Human Rights and Indigenous Peoples
Marc S. Miller, ed., 1993. State of the Peoples: A Global Human Rights Report on Societies in Danger. Boston: Beacon Press.
Human Ecology in Amazon
Emilio F. Moran, 1993. Through Amazon Eyes: The Human Ecology of Amazonian Populations. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.
Leslie E. Sponsel, ed., 1995. Indigenous Peoples and the Future of Amazonia: An Ecological Anthropology of an Endangered World. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Human Rights Advocacy Organizations for Indigenous Peoples in the Amazon and Elsewhere
Commission for the Creation of the Yanomami Park (CCPY)
Rua Manoel da Nobrega, 111 conj. 32
04001 Sao Paulo, SP - Brasil
Phone: (5511) 925-1200
FAX: (5511) 284-6997
(CCPY regularly publishes information bulletins and alerts on the Yanomami situation).
Cultural Survival
46 Brattle St.
Cambridge, MA 02138
Phone: (617) 441-5400
FAX: (617) 441-5417
Link to Cultural Survival
Email: Ultranet csinc@cs.org
Survival International
11-15 Emerald St.
London WC1N 3QL
United Kingdom
Phone: 0171-242-1441
FAX: 0171-242-1771
Advocacy Organization on Tropical Forests and Indigenous Inhabitants
Rainforest Action Network
450 Sansome, Suite 700
San Francisco, CA 94111
Tel: (415) 398-4404
FAX: (415) 398-2732
E-mail: rainforest@igc.apc.org
World Rainforest Movement
8 Chapel Row, Chadlington
OX7 3NA, England
Phone: 01608-676691
FAX: 44-1608-676743
E-mail: wrm@gn.apc.org
Descriptions of Yanomami Culture and Life
Napoleon A. Chagnon, 1992. Yanomamo. NY: Harcourt Brace College Publishers. Fourth edition.
Kenneth Good, 1991. Into the Heart: One Man's Pursuit of Love and Knowledge Among the Yanomamia. NY: Simon and Schuster.
Jacques Lizot, 1985. Tales of the Yanomami: Daily Life in the Venezuelan Forest. NY: Cambridge University Press.
Alcida Rita Ramos, 1995. Sanuma Memories: Yanomami Ethnography in Times of Crisis. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Yanomami Warfare
R. Brian Ferguson, 1995. Yanomami Warfare: A Political History. Santa Fe: School for American Research Press.
Mining in the Amazon
David Cleary, 1990. Anatomy of the Amazon Gold Rush. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.
Gordon MacMillan, 1995. At the End of the Raibow? Gold, People, and Land in the Brazilian Amazon. NY: Colombia University Press.
Gold Miners Among the Yanomami
Dennison Berwick, 1992. Savages: The Life and Killing of the Yanomami. London, UK: Hodder and Stoughton, Ltd.
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